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Tuesday, May 28, 2013

My boyfriend says that
the one new thing he's
learnt about me since
we moved in together
is that I leave my
books lying around
all over the house.

It's true. I like to
be surrounded by
books, all their
different colours and
sizes, a wall of
words.

I tell him that the one
thing I've learnt about
him is that, for a
cabinetmaker, he
doesn't own much
furniture.

I remind him of how
he won my heart by
promising to build me
bookcases for all my
books. He just
smiles, arranging the
books in towering
piles against the
wall.

- Kiri Piahana-Wong

Kiri Piahana-Wong is a New Zealander of Maori, Chinese and Pakeha ancestry. She has degrees in law and English literature from the University of Auckland, and has had a varied working life, including roles as a legal editor, sailing instructor, freelance writer, event manager and publisher.

Her book night swimming , published by Anahera Press, was recently launched in Auckland. My thanks to Kiri for permission to use Of books and bookcases as my Tuesday Poem this week. I chose it, not because it was necessarily the most representative of the book, but because it made me smile, and depicted a familiar problem - where to put all the books?

For more Tuesday Poems, visit the main hub site, along with all the other Tuesday poets listed in the sidebar there.

About Me

She tried hard to be like the others/she struggled to catch a ball/she never quite managed a cartwheel/after much practice she stood on her head./When she grew up she turned to science/she thought she would turn the world upside down/after a while she realised that the world had stayed in its proper place all along/and she was still standing on her head.